Subscribe To

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Seven Members of the SNS Board of Trustees Demand the Resignation of Managing Director, Anders Vredin

The sad circus of the inability of the leadership and management of the Centre for Business and Policy Studies (SNS) to stand up for elementary standards of scientific freedom and integrity against vested interests continues. My former posts on this affair are here and here.

Today, seven members of the SNS Board of Trustees – attached, among other things, to ensure that not even the proverbial wife of Caesar is suspected of things like the ones revealed in this affair – publish an article in my country's leading daily. They recount in astute terms the core of what this business is about, the faults committed, what is at stake for SNS and conclude by, in so many words, demanding the more or less immediate resignation of managing director Anders Vredin. Yesterday, Vredin made a sad attempt to put the toothpaste back into the tube, but as I described in my post on that, when reading what he actually says in that statement, it rather conveys the impression of a person that, albeit flagging academic credentials, a long time ago lost his moral compass when it comes to basic values of the research and scientific community.

The SNS board of trustees, it may be added, is no light collection of people. It hosts leading and very well-respected scholars and researchers in the academic fields often figuring in the projects of SNS, such as political economy and history of ideas – several of which are held in high regard, not least for their demonstrated high standards of integrity in relation to business and political interests.